


Me and My Family

by tanwencooper



Series: Busy Making Other Plans [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Childhood Memories, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Memories, Moving On, Pack, Pack Family, Photographs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:13:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanwencooper/pseuds/tanwencooper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Is that Laura?” Stiles asks.<br/>“Yeah,” says Derek taking it out of his hand.<br/>“Why do you have it shoved away in a drawer?” Stiles asks. “You don’t have any photos of your family out.”<br/>Derek looks at Laura’s frozen face. She’s is beautiful, smiling softly as the sunlight streams though her hair from behind but there is the deadness behind her eyes that Derek had seen every day in his own in the mirror. Only Stiles had been able to bring the light back to them and Laura had never had the time to find her own Stiles.<br/>“I don’t have any,” says Derek. “They all burned up in the fire.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Me and My Family

**Author's Note:**

> Experimenting with some stylistic stuff. Bare with me.
> 
> This is set in the [Three times a Lady](http://archiveofourown.org/series/31022) 'verse but is completely stand alone.

            It’s a cold Sunday morning when Stiles finds it. Derek had forgotten all about it, let alone which drawer he’d hidden it. Stiles is rummaging through his drawers for a spare hoody to fend off the chill in the air. It’s only when Derek sees the photograph in Stiles hand that he leaps forward to grab it. He doesn’t even really know why he’s so paranoid for Stiles to see it. Stiles has seen every facet of himself, why should a simple photograph be any different.

            “Is that Laura?” Stiles asks.

            “Yeah,” says Derek taking it out of his hand.

            “Why do you have it shoved away in a drawer?” Stiles asks. “You don’t have any photos of your family out.”

            Derek looks at Laura’s frozen face. She is beautiful, smiling softly as the sunlight streams though her hair from behind but there is the deadness behind her eyes that Derek had seen every day in his own in the mirror. Only Stiles had been able to bring the light back to them and Laura had never had the time to find her own Stiles.

            “I don’t have any,” says Derek. “They all burned up in the fire. Laura’s boyfriend took this one a few weeks before she came back to Beacon Hills. It was one of the last photos anyone ever took of her.”

            It’s the first time that Derek has ever mentioned Laura’s boyfriend to anyone since he came back to Beacon Hills. They two of them had had a fight when she’d told him she was coming back to Beacon Hills and broken up. She had had many such flings and all had ended the same way. Secrets and lies, then a fight and the man walks away. Nothing ever lasts when you must keep half yourself hidden away. This time was no different. Did he even know that Laura was gone? Derek had put the picture away when she’d died, unable to bear seeing her happy and whole now she was dead. She was his alpha, his pack and he’d let her die.

            Rather than put the picture back in the drawer he propped it up on top of the dresser drawers, wrapped his arms around Stiles and coaxed him back to bed where it was warm.

 

            Three months later Derek has gotten used to seeing his sister smiling every day. Where once it had caused him pain now it made him think of happier times. Of walking through Central Park and the coffee place near their apartment. Of running through the hills with his family and playing with his cousins on the Wolf Moon.

            It is odd. He realises that for many, many years he had not missed his family. Guilt had been his overriding emotion. He had allowed nothing else except the anger into himself. Now as he looks at Laura he misses her. Like an ache in his soul he didn’t know was possible. He wishes he could see his mother again and realises it had been so long since he even saw an image of her face that he can’t recall the exact colour of her eyes or how her hair was cut. His father’s scent would be as foreign to him now as the spices of the markets in New Deli. He grasps for it but it is gone. Laura, who was with him only a year ago, has a voice like an echo on the edge of hearing. He goes to listen but it has already faded away into silence.

            It hurts to remember them but he makes time to do it every day because what he remembers is not nearly as painful as what he knows he has forgotten.

           

            It is sitting on the kitchen counter when he comes home to find the house empty. A large book, the pages propped slightly apart by the items slipped between. A scrap book. On the front in calligraphic letters is written ‘My Family’. The book smells of Stiles.

            He squints at it and opens up the first page. A chokes back a sob as he finds a colour photograph of his parents at their wedding. He recalls laughing at the photo when it had rested on the mantelpiece, him and Laura ridiculing his mother’s impossibly large hair and poofy dress. Next to it is a photocopy of a local newspaper article from decades before, the school baseball team holding a trophy proudly. He finds his grandfather’s name amongst the roster and matches it to his youthful face. His mother had the same nose. There is another photocopy of his grandmother, young and sweet, holding up a pie with a rosette pinned to her apron.

            Turning the pages he sees his family looking back out at him. Cousins whose names he’d begun to forget grin from year book photos. More newspaper clippings, some with pictures some with only names. There are even a few snapshots from birthdays and parties. In one he sees his mother sat next to Stiles’ Mom, a small baby balanced on her knee. Derek can’t tell if it is himself or Stiles, perhaps even Laura. It must have been sat in some corner of Stiles’ attic since his mother’s death.

            There are pictures of him and Laura when they were still in high school. Most were of his sister, who had always been the popular one but there were a few with friends he’d not thought about in years. He imagined Stiles tracking them down, asking them if they had any pictures they wouldn’t mind him taking. Perhaps they would ask after Derek, how he was doing, wonder why this strange kid was coming around looking for pictures of him.

            Derek turned the page. It was a picture of the pack. All of them including the hangers on. Derek, Stiles, Scott, Allison, Lydia, Jackson, Erica, Boyd, Isaac and Danny. It’d been taken at the movie and pizza night they’d had for Derek’s birthday a few months ago. They all looked happy, even Derek but that was mainly because he was looking at Stiles. On the page opposite was a single black and white photo of the two of them together. They are both happy and smiling, oblivious to everything but each other.

            The photo is half way through the book. The rest of the pages are blank.

            Derek runs his fingers down the empty page and smiles at all the memories he will place upon them. Him and his family.

**Author's Note:**

> Stiles spent months trawling through newspaper archives for articles on the Hales, tracking down their family friends to find pictures. Deaton helped set Stiles on the right track. The wedding photo is from Derek's one remaining aunt who lives in New York, who Derek lived with after the fire until he was 18 before promptly moving out. They haven't spoken since. When Stiles found the picture of their two mothers sitting side by side he cried.


End file.
